ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 3, 1996 TAG: 9602030020
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
If Punxsutawney Phil lived in the New River Valley, the famous rodent wouldn't even have been able to come out of his hole Friday, much less see his shadow to forecast six more weeks of winter.
Nearly four weeks since the last big storm, valley residents went back to the all-too-familiar routines of hunkering down to deal with a major snowfall. Schools and Virginia Tech closed, retail businesses closed or opened late, shelves emptied at grocery stores and a new layer of snow covered driveways and awaited removal by lower backs just recovered from the last go-round.
What follows are snowfall snippets from around our area:
Things were hot at Dino's Pizza around lunch time Friday.
The Blacksburg pizza delivery store had three people working: two drivers and a cook who also took orders.
Wes Birchfield, the cook and manager, said the store was buzzing.
By 1:15 p.m. he already had 36 pizza orders. Normally, during the 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. hours, he takes 15 to 20 orders.
About 99 percent of the orders were from on-campus Virginia Tech students, he said. Some orders were coming from residents at Foxridge Apartments, a longer haul for his drivers, neither of whom had four-wheel drive vehicles.
"People are more than willing to risk other people's lives," Birchfield said about the customers who were ordering.
Video stores saw a mad rush of people preparing for a long weekend indoors.
Patrick Barton, assistant manager at Moovies in Christiansburg and the only person working Friday, said he rented about 300 movies between 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.
Barton said the last snowstorm boosted January's overall sales. During that weekend, the store rented about 3,000 videos.
Don't blame Blacksburg auctioneer Larry Linkous for feeling a little "snow-bitten" as he prepares for his second major indoor auction of the year. It is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. today
His last auction was on Jan. 6 - the Saturday morning of the first "near blizzard," which dumped 34 inches on Blacksburg.
"It seems like if I want it to snow, I just have to schedule an auction," Linkous said Friday.
The snow didn't hurt crowds last time - nearly 300 people packed into the Custom Catering Center. This time, like last, Linkous, a former Montgomery County supervisor, promises a scraped parking lot to reach the antiques, appliances and household goods inside. "Tell them to come on, we'll be here."
Back Country Ski and Sports near Blacksburg quickly rented or sold snowy weather essentials: nordic and alpine skis, equipment, gloves and goggles, to name a few.
Jeff George said he expected the store to be out of ski rentals for cross-country and downhill skis and snowboards by today.
He said many people were heading to Winterplace in West Virginia for downhill skiing, while people who were renting cross-country skis wanted to use them in their back yards, on roads and on golf courses.
It is no secret the New River Valley loses retail business every time it succumbs to the winter elements and closes. But the snow also drains the mall's resources.
Before this latest deluge, the mall already was $5,000 over its snow removal budget of about $20,000 for the year, said Manager Mike Poldiak.
That is nothing, however, compared to the total bill for Crown American Corp., the Pennsylvania-based company that owns New River and 24 other malls throughout the country.
Poldiak said Crown American Corp. has spent close to $800,000 in snow removal - a number that will only increase after this storm.
"You do what you can to stay open," he said.
Poldiak added, "Last year I looked back and we did not spend nearly as much. I thought we'd have enough this year, but not so."
At Virginia Tech, administrators cancelled classes for the first time this semester. The main consideration, according to spokesman Larry Hincker, is that two-thirds of the university's students live off-campus, and early in the morning Blacksburg Transit buses were not running.
That meant Hincker and Co. had to get the word out to 30,000 people - 6,000 employees and 24,000 students - in a matter of two or three hours. He figures about half that number get the word through radio and television broadcasts and the other half call in to university switchboards and the "weather line" - 231-6668.
"It can handle 72 phone calls at a time," Hincker said. "We've got to be able to handle somewhere on the order of 15,000 to 20,000 phone calls."
University housing and dining officials were making plans to keep students occupied and cafeterias going strong through the snowy weekend.
During past bad-weather events, the university has housed food-service and other essential people at the Donaldson Brown Hotel and Conference Center or vacant dorm rooms. "We may need to keep people over," Hincker said.
Otherwise, Tech may use its four-wheel drive vehicles to pick up essential personnel, such as campus police officers and snow removal workers.
Over in Narrows, officials with Hoechst Celanese's Celco Plant were keeping an eye on the weather before deciding if they needed to ask people to stay over. The plant operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week; its managers don't have the luxury of shutting down when the weather turns bad. But not to worry, said John McQuail, human resources superintendent: the plant's 1,850 employees are well aware that snow is a part of wintertime life in Giles County.
"We've got probably more four-wheel drives in our parking lot than Shelor and all the dealerships in Blacksburg typically have," said McQuail. "We've just got a group of super-dedicated employees and they pride themselves on getting here and doing what needs to be done."
And if they do need to ask employees to stay overnight because of exceptional snowfall Saturday, then the meals will be on the company.
"We always ensure that we have plenty of food in the cafeteria," McQuail said.
And while some roads in the New River Valley were barely passable, traffic flowed smoothly on the information highway. Blacksburg residents reported, via e-mail, that they spent Friday sending out resumes, caring for children, working (modems don't close down like offices do) and checking weather reports on line.
Robert Youngs spent the day chewing on his pencil (or the computer equivalent) and thinking about a writing project. "A two-week snowfall would be about right for making some real progress on this," he said.
Melissa Matusevich, an instructional coordinator for Montgomery County schools, said that when it snows, she catches up on work via computer from the warmth of her home. "And no one can tell whether or not I'm still in my pajamas."
And Virginia Tech Professor Mary Beth Oliver wrote that she was feeling chilly until she received e-mail from some friends who had moved from Blacksburg to Fargo, N.D. "They tell us it's 35 below zero up there [not to mention the wind chill]. That was enough to warm us up!"
Staff writers Elissa Milenky, Brian Kelley, Lisa Applegate and Hal Sheikerz contributed to this story.
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